we live without breathing
by deanwinchesters
Summary: in a society where you are not allowed to choose your love, the emotion in its raw form is scarce, but a slim few manage to find it / percyannabeth, for nina at the monsters in the closet exchange / au, dystopian future


**dedication: **Ninaaaaaaaaa (titaniums), for the _Monsters In The Closet _Valentine's Day exchange. You're perfectly perfect and exotic and amazing and poetic, and I love you and hope you like this.

**prompts: **sundaes, blue orchids, memory lane and a minotaur shaped cloud

**pairing:** percy&annabeth

**disclaimer:** I do not own "Percy Jackson and the Olympians".

**notes:** This is loosely based off of _Matched_ by Ally Condie (mainly the matching ritual). This is an all human au and a onexshot, set a few hundred years in the future.

* * *

Ever since she was able to, Annabeth Chase had loved reading more than anything.

In her eyes, there was something about slipping into the skin of a character that made the blonde girl feel accepted—the characters on the pages lived more than she ever was able to, and she lived out her desires through the pages.

When she closed her eyes, she liked pretending she was a character in a novel, and twisted the endings of novels in her mind. Her state of pre-slumber was like an escape from reality in her mind—she didn't contain the abilities to write her thoughts down, so instead, she imagined them while her eyes were closed.

She loved reading old novels about the future—trilogies like _The Hunger Games_ and _Divergent_ were her favorites. Though the endings of both broke her heart, she liked to imagine that the future she lived in was as interesting as the futures that she read about in books.

Her life was a boring utopia lacking choice and thrill, and she felt like screaming.

Though it was insane, Annabeth wished that she was in Panem, and she wished that something in her life would bring the thrill that the day of a reaping would. She didn't live for certain highs as some daredevils did, but she wished to live for _something_ that would make her smile randomly when she thought of the thrill.

Annabeth wished to be able to close her eyes at night and think of her own life for once. What would it be like to have a life worth living? She couldn't imagine something in her life that would make her thoughtless and plainly happy—she saw life as a series of numbers and words, and there was nothing worth living for in the black and white.

/

She knew that when she turned eighteen, she would be assigned a perfect match, and would fall (or pretend to) in love with whoever she was placed with. Annabeth would smile and laugh at his every word, and pretend that she could not have made a better choice on her own.

She wondered that if, had she been provided with the freedom of choice, she would fall in love on her own free will. Would she find someone who could make her laugh, or was it just some fantasy that she liked to play with?

The people at her school dated, but the relationships were never serious. People who were sixteen as she was would simply hook up with people they found attractive or casually date someone, but the relationships were never love. They knew that in only a few years, they would be forced to someone else, some stranger, and they were okay with that.

Annabeth knew that a freedom of choice would not change her life too much, but she liked to believe that she was all right with the constant directions from people she had never met through a screen.

When she was not inside her house and reading, she was in a strange area half a mile away from her house, something of a forest that would be described in her novels.

She liked to find her way to the center of the forest of thin trees to the place that a ray of light pressed through a thin area in the branches. The area was a place that she thought was magic when she was small—she imagined faeries coming and dancing around the blue orchids—and something familiar to her. It was her hiding place from reality.

She let her fingers trail along the velvet of a blue orchid before pulling herself onto a low branch of the tree, one that reached just above Annabeth's waist when she stood. She pulled herself up with experience, smoothed her shirt that had dragged to expose her stomach down, and leaned back against the comfortable branch.

Moments after her grey eyes closed, the song of a bird came, and Annabeth opened her eyes to see a few red birds flying away from the clearing. The sound of leaves crunching underneath someone's foot followed, and her head snapped to the source of the sound.

The noise came from a boy who was almost heavenly: black hair, tall, tan skin, and eyes made of a disturbed sea. A smile of white teeth struck her through the tan skin, and the blonde girl found herself looking up to see what he was smiling about.

He was smiling at her—his eyes were fixated on her, and swept over her body with some spark of curiosity. He seemed to like what he saw, and Annabeth crossed her arms over her chest, "I'm Percy."

He was made of trouble in disorienting eyes and a leather jacket. He was danger brewed of half smiles and charming looks, but for a moment, Annabeth wasn't thinking of logistics or how much damage the boy could cause.

"I'm Annabeth."

/

Percy Jackson was a student from New York, and Annabeth soon found that he was more of a rebel than anyone she would ever meet. He liked to twist the rules, he liked talking back against his superiors, and he liked to try and open Annabeth's eyes.

From the moment he met her, he knew that she followed the rules constantly, and saw that as a challenge. He watched as she followed the rules without thinking, and tried to make it into some kind of mission to open her eyes to what else could be.

He didn't believe that you could pick love—love started slowly, then happened all at once, but it was not something that you could simply pick from a computer.

Percy took his mother and father as an example—they looked like they were perfect together on paper, but there was something off about the couple. They were too similar, and he believed that opposites attracted each other—when you were next to someone that was exactly like you, there would be no arguments. There would be no change in the relationship, and nothing to speak about.

He couldn't imagine living with someone who shared his views—he liked arguing, and he always smiled when someone would fight with him about even the smallest of topics.

He loved it when someone would blatantly defy his views, and would find a way to argue with him about everything and anything. Agreement was boring, and he had had much too many girlfriends who would go along with whatever passed his lips to keep him happy.

He had never met someone who fought him as Annabeth did. He had no clue that someone could disagree with him on so many topics, but he didn't mind—he had to keep a grin off of his face when she fought him and when she called him a name for being so stupid.

He wasn't stupid—he wasn't as smart as Annabeth, but not stupid—but when he was with her, he spoke before he thought. He didn't mind: it made her laugh, and he loved her delicate laughter. He didn't mind that she was laughing over his idiocy—it was a fun sport to annoy the blonde girl as much as humanly possible.

He liked to meet her at her favorite part of the forest and make her move to the side so that he could lie next to her and watch the clouds dance in the sky—he believed they resembled plumes of white smoke and freedom.

The clouds had no one restraining them, so why should they?

"Look," Percy whispered to her, pointing at a misshapen cloud with some form of horns, "It's a cow. One of the ones with horns."

"Only bulls have horns, Seaweed Brain." Annabeth whispered back to him, but her lips were spread in a smile. "And it's a creature from Greek Mythology. Like a Minotaur."

He asked her what a Minotaur was, and she gave him some definition that he could not remember—often when he asked her questions, he did it so that he could hear the blonde girl speak. He liked her voice—it was factual and static for the most part, but he liked the way her lips curved to form the words, and the way her voice covered the noises.

He enjoyed every aspect of the complex girl lying next to him, and was starting to wonder if he loved her.

/

"Go out with me."

A smooth voice came from the outside of Annabeth's locker, and soon after her fingers were out of the way, the brown door slammed shut. Her gray eyes flickered upwards to clash with eyes of a gentle ocean, completed with half of a sexy smile.

The boy in the leather jacket slipped his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, and a devilish grin was brought her way. Annabeth sighed at Percy, and leaned back against her locker, shaking her head no. "Percy, I . . . I can't. There's only thirty five days until the both of us are matched, and I know for a fact that you aren't going to be it."

"Annabeth, listen to me—"

"No, you listen." Annabeth said softly, letting her eyes fall downwards. "I don't want to fall for you, Percy. It's too soon . . . if you had asked me a few months ago, I might have said yes, but I'm too close to finding the man I'm supposed to be with. My match."

"Who gives a damn? He's not the man that you're supposed to be with—whoever he is, he's your soulmate on paper. He's a male version of you—do you want someone who you can never talk to, someone who will be identical to you in every way he can be? You don't need that, Annabeth. You need excitement in your life—I know it. You want to live on the wild side just once. You want to live, Annabeth. Let me help you." Percy's voice was pleading.

"I . . . I can't." Annabeth whispered, shaking her head rapidly. Wisps of blonde hair fell in her eyes, and she pushed away from him, leaving him dumbstruck.

He had been begging, but a part of him knew that he desired her for his own sake—she said she was afraid of falling for him, but he had already fallen for her in a way that he had no clue how to recover from.

But Annabeth did not have the wild streak he did. She believed in logic and order, and he believed in chaos—they were opposites, but they were so different that they could not be brought together. It did not matter what force pulled them forwards. There would always be a wedge between them, and that wedge came in the form of the utopia that they lived in.

And perhaps, the utopia was more of a dystopia, built on lies told to the people to help them sleep soundly at night.

/

"This used to be called Valentine's Day."

After her rejection, Percy had avoided the clearing that they met in—it was a sort of pain for him, and he knew that he would have to lay eyes on the beautiful girl if he returned.

But he needed to—he needed to be close to her. For the past two weeks, he had contemplated a way to bring himself to her, and searched for a way to spark her interest so that she would not run away upon meeting his beautiful eyes.

Percy knew the blonde girl well, and knew that the statement would spike her interest. She looked up, and he smiled, letting his fingers curl around a blue orchid to gently pull it from the ground in some peace offering, "The celebration of this holiday stopped around two hundred years ago—a year before the matching began—but it was a holiday that lovers used to express their love for one another through cards and hearts and sundaes."

Annabeth sat up in the tree, but nodded once to tell him to continue. Her legs swung back and forth, and Percy let a traitorous smile fall onto his lips. "They used to tell poems to the people that they admired, and bought silly gifts like flowers and chocolates to celebrate the day. I'm not sure where the name came from—I couldn't find that—but I know that it was on the fourteenth of February. Like today."

"How did the poems go?" Annabeth asked, the first words that she had passed to him since she had rejected him. There was a ghost of a smile covering her gentle features, and Percy risked a second rejection to walk closer to her. She stayed still, and he noticed that her feet stopped swinging as he approached.

"Roses are red, violets are blue." He saw her try to interrupt (most likely to state that violets were purple, not blue) and placed a finger to his lips—he was close enough to touch her, and he felt her shiver at the touch. "I think you're beautiful, and would run away with you."

He tucked a fallen curl of blonde hair behind her ear, pinning it back with the orchid he had picked. She bit her lip gently, and he let his hand sweep over her cheek, stilling it when her eyes met his.

The seas and the clouded skies met, and their lips crashed together in a display of dulled senses, betrayal, and waves of sparks crashing over both of their bodies.

Her legs wrapped around his waist, and he brought her to be pressed against a tree that could support her weight so that his hands could sweep over her body. Small noises of desire and confusion came from the both of them, but neither of them were thinking about what they were doing, or what the consequences would be.

For once, they were both rebels, but the world around them was muted.

/

Annabeth wished that she could walk down memory lane and drink in the past, but she had no past to sip—she only had twenty days with Percy. Twenty days of memories before everything was ripped away. Twenty days of sorrows, twenty days of happiness, twenty days of ecstasy beyond anything that she could imagine.

Now, it was all gone.

As her mother zipped her into a grey dress (grey to match her eyes), it took all the blonde girl had not to break down and cry. Her family was buzzing around her, speaking of the day they were matched, and promising her that it was the best thing she could ever experience.

She didn't want any of it—she wanted to be only with Percy, but unless there was a flaw in the system, it was impossible for her name to be called next to his.

Her mother told her she was beautiful, but when the blonde girl looked in the mirror, all she could think about was whether or not she would ever see Percy again, and wonder why she had not cherished their last meeting.

The last time her lips laid against his, the exchange had ended with him repeating his words ("I think you're beautiful, and would run away with you.") and with her laughing, her ecstasy still having a grip on her. She did not realize until later that it was the last exchange she would have with him.

She didn't tell him how she felt about him. She wanted to whisper that she could not imagine living without him, but she was too shy, and now she was internally screaming at herself for not confessing it to him.

She had nothing to lose—he would be gone. She would be heartbroken. He would be shattered. They would meet again, each with their own significant 'match'. They would smile at each other from across an empty room. They would possibly exchange a hello and hold behind what they wanted to say to each other. Then, they would go back to their matches, and pretend that their hearts had not shattered all over again.

She was wrong about possibly never seeing him again (at least not before the matching), but the meeting was at the last place she wanted to see him: the matching hall. She was seated three rows ahead of him, and was in just the position for Percy to have to watch her back as she was picked for whoever she was matched to.

The time buzzed away, so loudly that she could hardly hear the matchings. Most of it was just incoherent noise to her, but she heard Leo Valdez being paired with Calypso, and a few other odd pairings of strangers. The pairing of the two gave her a spark of hope—they were not as alike as most matched couples were—and her eyes met with Percy's from across the room.

"Annabeth Chase," The voice called, and Annabeth smiled. For a moment, she believed that she could somehow be matched with the rebellious boy, and a glimpse of hope flashed past her grey eyes.

"Your match is Luke Castellan."

/

Like a scene in Romeo and Juliet, Percy was trying to climb Annabeth's balcony, and was failing at that. His every movement seemed to bring him so that he fell further down, and he was sure that he was hallucinating when he reached the top.

"Percy?" And then, his angel in gold hair and grey eyes stepped onto her balcony, dressed in nothing more than a tank top and jeans. She seemed tired, but the sight of him woke her up. "Why are you here? Shouldn't you be with Alaska?" She asked softly, trying not to cringe when she said the name of the girl Percy was supposed to be next to.

"Annabeth, I need you." Percy said, his voice soft. "I wasn't lying when I told you that I would run away with you—I meant it, and prayed to God that you meant it when you smiled. And I love you, Annabeth. I've loved since the day that you told me what a Minotaur was, and possibly before that. And I will keep loving you. It doesn't matter who I'm matched to, or who I meet, or who I say I love—it will always be you. I will love you for every waking moment of my life, and I will think about you forever."

There was something about Percy, something that made Annabeth want to dive headfirst into the unknown. She drank in the poison he was made of—she was addicted to the thrill he brought to her static life, and needed him just as much as he claimed to need her. He made her thoughtless and wild, but when she was by him, she felt brave.

"Run away with me, Annabeth." He whispered, so softly that she could hardly detect his words. He pressed his forehead to hers, greenish eyes closed, and a flutter of a smile managed to find its way onto her face.

"I will."

* * *

Question of the day:

**What is your favorite song?** Right now, I'm obsessed with _Skinny Love _by Birdy. And everything else on my tumblr playlist.

feed the review box below! c:


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